Tag: FINLAND

Belgian officials announced that all migrants have been cleared from a Brussels transit station that had become a de facto ‘no-go zone’ due to their presence and a reported outbreak of diseases.

“On the initiative of Minister of Asylum and Migration, Maggie De Block, and thanks to a collaboration between various authorities, officials and organizations, the Brussels North Station has been evacuated today,” Minister De Block’s office said in a press release on Friday.

“The transmigrants will first receive shelter in the homeless centers in Brussels. There they receive customized information from Fedasil about voluntary return or asylum procedures. However, those who return to the North Station will be transferred to a closed asylum center.”

Brussels-North, one of the city’s busiest transportation hubs, had been overrun by illegal migrants, presenting security and health hazards that ultimately led to a recent suspension of bus services by local unions who cited an alleged spread of malaria, tuberculosis, and scabies.

Additionally, Agence Bruxelles Proprété, responsible for handling cleaning operations at the station, determined employees should be vaccinated against multiple strains of hepatitis in order to work at the facility.

Mounting pressure forced the government to finally mitigate the crisis.

“I am very happy with this important breakthrough,” De Block said. “We are now giving the Noordstation back to the commuters and travelers.”

“A train station is not a reception center. The circumstances were not humane, neither for transmigrants, nor for the travelers and people who had to work there.”

“I wonder what their employers would think”

A verified Twitter journalist is threatening to contact people’s employers because they did the ‘OK’ hand sign.

Yes, seriously.

Finnish Twitter user Iisak Selin responded to a tweet by journalist David MacDougall with a photo of himself using the hand gesture.

MacDougall responded by tweeting, “Hi Iisak – Do you have a job? I wonder what your employers think of you making a sign that has been co-opted by white supremacists and racists? Would be interesting to find out. Or maybe a future employer is interested…”

But MacDougall wasn’t finished.

He then responded to another individual who posted a photo of himself doing the OK hand sign with the same threat.

“I don’t know if these people have jobs, but I wonder what their employers would think about them making signs that are closely associated with & used by white supremacists and racists?” asked MacDougall.

That’s funny, because I wonder when MacDougall and his ilk will stop abusing their platforms to threaten to doxx people simply because they don’t like their politics and do some actual journalism.

Respondents on Twitter soon put MacDougall in his place.

As we document in the video below, the media was tricked into believing the OK hand sign was secret code for white supremacy as a result of a 4chan troll and has been whipping up hysteria about it ever since.

Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reveals attempts by the Ministry of Justice and Safety to obfuscate the amount of crime committed by asylum seekers. In an article published on 16 May, the paper writes that despite promises of openness, the Ministry has attempted to hide serious crimes by misnaming them ‘other incidents’. Those ‘other incidents’ include rape cases and child abuse.

This deliberate attempt at misleading the public comes after De Telegraaf had to resort to legal steps in 2017 to get data on crimes committed by asylum seekers. Then, the Ministry denied keeping a separate registration, claiming it had no figures to release. In reality, the police kept statistics, with De Telegraafclaiming the sheer volume of the files kept the authorities from releasing the information.

In what the paper dubs a ‘painful affair’, two years later the Ministry is up to its old tricks again. The aim is yet again to obscure: it is the Ministry that grouped a 1000 ‘other crimes’, and yet again De Telegraaf had to resort to police sources to fill in the deliberate blanks.

Of the 1000 ‘others’, 79 were sexual offences, ranging from sexual assault, to sexual abuse of children, to rape, to possession of child pornography. Police were called for 51 cases of battery, 31 cases of murder or manslaughter. There were 5 counts of kidnap or hostage taking, 4 times it was for human trafficking, and 73 times there was a disturbance of the peace.

The Ministry, meanwhile, professes its innocence. A spokesperson blames the police for not giving exact enough data. But the fact that the police has the information, implies that the Ministry could have demanded the information, according to Jasper van Dijk, MP. He concludes that “it is remarkable that the Ministry didn’t report this [want of information], this is a lack of transparency. We need to know what we are debating.”

The 1000 ‘other’ crimes paint a less than sterling picture of the situation in and around asylum locations. In total, the police registered 4600 crimes committed by asylum seekers in 2018. Shoplifting (2030 cases) was popular, followed by pickpocketing, stealing purses, physical abuse and making threats.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the new ‘Christchurch Call’ to curb violent and terrorist content online. No one in their right mind wants mass shootings live-streamed online — but it’s what comes next that should worry us.

Drawn up in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque massacre, which was streamed live online, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s ‘Christchurch Call’ is billed as a “roadmap for action”and calls for the “immediate and permanent” removal of “terrorist and violent extremist content” from social media platforms. It has been signed by 18 governments and eight tech companies.

On the face of it, that sounds fine. It’s difficult to argue against removing terrorist content from the platforms so many of us use on a daily basis. The trouble is, Ardern has already admitted that the pledge is simply a “starting point”— and if you were expecting this to be the moment at which social media companies finally began to push back a little bit, sorry to disappoint you, but they’re all in on it together.

Endorsing censorship

Lord of social media, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is afflicted with an obvious and ever-worsening God complex, offered a full-throated endorsement of online censorship a few days ago, saying “…the question of what speech should be acceptable and what is harmful needs to be defined by regulation, by thoughtful governments.”

That’s right, Zuck thinks “thoughtful governments”should be deciding what is “acceptable”for us to say online. There’s no ambiguity there. It’s a simple, straight-forward endorsement of the idea that governments should be allowed to regulate our speech. If that doesn’t worry you, then maybe you’re the kind of person who reads dystopian novels and cheers for the wrong side.

Zuckerberg’s comment isn’t exactly out of the blue. Facebook is already under fire for censoring political speech from both the right and left ends of the political spectrum. The company has banned a slew of right-wing commentators and conservative agitators from its platform and taken worrying steps against leftist and anti-war activists around the world.

Just the beginning

So, if social media companies aren’t going to fight back on our behalf (and they clearly are not), who will? The obvious answer is “journalists” — but they don’t appear to be in too much of a rush to halt this creeping censorship either. Some of them appear to be advocating more censorship, rather than less.

Ardern replied that focusing on terrorist content was just the “point of departure” on which everyone could agree. So this is a journey we are on. We’ve departed at ‘terrorism is bad’ — but where will we end? Ardern said she was wary that going any further right now would “open the way for debate” on potential risks to freedom of expression. But in a joint press conference on Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, she said her hope was that working together, governments and tech companies could“eliminate ideologies of hate.”

That would be lovely — and if only the word were so simple, we could just eliminate all the meanies from the internet and live in an online utopia. Unfortunately, this is completely unrealistic, and when you start talking about eliminating certain ideologies, that’s where things get sketchy. Particularly if we’re going to delegate the task of deciding what is and is not “harmful” (as Zuckerberg said) to “thoughtful governments.”

‘Hate speech’ or ‘free speech’?

Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis is set to sign a bill that would make it a“hate crime” to “demonize” or“delegitimize” Israel. The bill purports to be about “anti-Semitism” but it’s really just a vehicle to censor and even criminalize political speech. You see, that’s the kind of thing that“thoughtful” politicians get up to if left to their own devices. Then again, the Florida bill probably isn’t something that would ring alarm bells at Facebook HQ, either. Zuckerberg already happily complies with orders from the Israeli government to delete Palestinian activist accounts.

As for the US government, it has refused to sign Ardern’s ‘Christchurch Call’ citing first amendment rights — but declining to sign a vague and non-binding agreement doesn’t mean much. Capitol Hill is still swarming with politicians just dying to enforce more restrictions on free speech.

A US government intelligence report last year highlighted a former RT show hosted by Abby Martin as an example of content that sowed “radical discontent” in society for critically covering controversial issues like US regime change wars, fracking, capitalism and police brutality. Be careful out there, you never know what could be defined as “radical” content next.

As journalist Igor Ogorodnev wrote in a recent oped, the aftermath of an atrocity“is a honeypot for short-sighted do-gooders buzzing about looking to do something, but also opportunist politicians to realize their long-harbored ambitions.”

Trying to distract us

Social media is what the public uses to organize en masse in the 21st century.

Is it any wonder that Macron, facing months of Yellow Vest protests against his government, is helping lead the charge toward more online censorship?

A French government report recently called for the eradication of content that damages “social cohesion” and warned that“false information,”“unfounded rumors” and“individuals pursuing political or financial objectives” can have an impact on “the social order.” But who decides what constitutes “false information” and “unfounded rumors”? Is Macron’s government “thoughtful” enough for Zuckerberg?

Qatar is one out of 33 developing countries that ban abortion except in cases where abortions would preserve the health of the mother, according to a 2017 report from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that globally pushes sexual and reproductive health and rights. Guttmacher noted Qatar makes exceptions for abortions when there are fetal anomalies, which are commonly referred to as birth defects that could affect the pregnancy or the child’s quality of life.

“BREAKING,” Al Jazeera tweeted Tuesday. “Alabama’s Senate voted to outlaw abortion. The law: – Makes performing abortion a felony – Does not make exemptions for rape, incest – Only allows abortions to prevent serious health risk to the mother – Would go into law 6 months after the governor signs it.”

A Syria policy adviser for the charity Help Refugees, Oz Katerji, responded in a tweet. “In Qatar, abortions are only legal if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. Women who receive an ‘unauthorised’ abortion face 5 years in jail,” Katerji said.

“I respect a lot of the work AJ do, and I think it is crucial that people unite in condemnation of this barbarism taking place in US states, but the hypocrisy here is staggering,” Katerji continued.

“Opponents to the law have been very vociferous in their outcry, saying that this would punish rape victims and it would push women to seek abortions underground in unsafe procedures,” Al Jazeera correspondent Heidi Zhou-Castro said, according to an Al Jazeera article. The article includes perspectives of those both for and against H.B. 314.

The only exception is for when “abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk,” according to the bill’s text. All other abortion procedures are classified under the new law as Class A felonies, punishable by up to 99 years in prison. The abortion provider would be charged with the felony, but the mother would not be charged.

“Today, I signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that was approved by overwhelming majorities in both chambers of the Legislature,” Ivey said in a statement. “To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”

Al Jazeera did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

The New York City entered the race, and came out swinging against President Donald J. Trump.

The never-ending list of Democratic Party candidates for president got a little bit longer Thursday, when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his candidacy.

“Even before his announcement, de Blasio already qualified to participate in the Democratic primary debates, according to a poll from Reuters and Ipsos,”Axios said. “The mayor intends to leverage his record of New York achievements such as universal pre-kindergarten and raising the minimum hourly wage. Following the announcement, he will go on a 4-day campaign tour to Iowa and South Carolina, per NBC.”

President Donald J. Trump weighed in on de Blasio’s candidacy on Twitter.

“The Dems are getting another beauty to join their group. Bill de Blasio of NYC, considered the worst mayor in the U.S., will supposedly be making an announcement for president today. He is a JOKE, but if you like high taxes & crime, he’s your man. NYC HATES HIM!” he said.

“There’s plenty of money in this world. There’s plenty of money in this country. It’s just in the wrong hands,” de Blasio said in a campaign announcement video.

He spent the first half of his announcement video describing his far-left platform, which includes universal healthcare, a $15 minimum wage, and “free” Pre-Kindergarten education for all. He spent the second half of the announcement video attacking Trump, calling him a “bully.”

De Blasio is squarely in the progressive corner. He was widely ridiculed for last month for proposing a skyscraper ban in New York City to fight climate change.

The mayor of America’s most populous city has a new plan to fight “global warming,” and it involves doing away with the landscape of the city over which he presides.

“We’re going to introduce legislation to ban the glass and steel skyscrapers that have contributed so much to global warming,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “They have no place in our city or our Earth anymore.”

The mayor did not offer much in the way of specifics regarding his plan. Will existing skyscrapers be demolished, or will the city ban new ones from being erected? Many such buildings are apartments and condos. Will the people who live in them be forced to move? Also, what happened to “climate change?” This reporter was under the impression that “global warming” was an outdated term.

According to Spectrum News 1 in New York City, de Blasio’s proposal would prevent developers from “using all glass facades unless they meet strict new energy guidelines,” which he called “the city’s version of the Green new Deal.”